Words are wonderful things. I have always loved them. They expose the human heart to the light of day; they protect in darkness what are the secrets of the soul. But I wonder sometimes if, however powerful the words, they can possibly have the impact of one picture.

Some day I will make a list of the photographs that have shaped my life. I know some of them without thinking: Nelson Mandela walking spry and determined out of a South African prison after twenty-six years in jail; Jackie Kennedy crawling over the back of a moving car in an attempt to get help for John Kennedy, her wounded husband, our bleeding president; a naked Vietnamese child aflame with American napalm on a quiet country road; the young father I never knew standing tall and gentle over my small self just before he died; an old man on crutches baking bread in a large monastery kitchen; Pope John XXIII smiling in the midst of an institution not known for smiles; and one lone young man in a sea of faceless onlookers staring down a Chinese tank in the center of Tiananmen Square.

Those snapshots carry veins of meaning for me. They are all pictures of people facing life with every ounce of strength within them. When the day is long and the project is failing, they say to me: Be strong. Stand firm. Go on. Don’t quit. Be who you are and what you must be whatever the pressures against you. Be clear as glass always. Be it to the very end. Why? Because the scripture says, starkly telling, resounding for its simplicity: “You are the light of the world.” What people see in you, they know to look for within themselves. What people see in you, they too may hope to extract from the depth of their own hearts.

We are, each one of us, stones skipped across the waters of the universe. The ripples of our presence, whatever it is, good or bad, radiates forever. As you go, in other words, so goes the world.

—from Living Well by Joan Chittister (Orbis)